Cornucopia Of Spam Bills

frankie writes "Anti-spam legislation is getting serious attention from the U.S. Congress and the media. Several bills are on the front burner, including REDUCE, CAN SPAM, and a RICO amendment. However, the strongest contender is a new bill sponsored by Billy Tauzin (R-La.). It would allow spam from any company you've done business with in the past 3 years, override stronger state laws, and block private lawsuits. You can complain now or complain more later."

Comments

Perhaps not that bad?

[Phroggy]

Actually I'm not sure this is such a completely bad thing. Junk mail from legitimate companies that I have given my e-mail address to voluntarily is such a small problem - compared to the other crap flooding my mailbox - that I usually don't even count it as spam, even if it is unsolicited.

I know, some people think anything they don't want is spam and will report it as such via SpamCop or other tools. That's dumb. If it's stupid chain letters from your uncle, it's not spam. If it comes from a legitimate company, they'll offer an opt-out link that will actually works, because they don't want to piss off potential customers and they know how much people hate spam.

With that in mind, what are the other serious problems with this bill?

Re:Perhaps not that bad?

[graxrmelg]

Junk mail from legitimate companies isn't much of a problem now, because spam has not been legitimized and is associated mainly with scams and porn. Once spam has a federal stamp of approval, there's nothing stopping "legitimate" companies from flooding your e-mail box as well. They already flood you by phone and snail mail, but they'll send much more by e-mail because it's so much cheaper for them.

And where did you get the idea that companies care about pissing off potential customers with advertising? You may have noticed that we're moving toward a time when every visible surface and every moment of your life is filled with advertising. I haven't noticed any slackening in junk phone calls, paper junk mail, advertising before movies, product placement, or percentage of TV time taken by ads -- they're all increasing, with no apparent upper bound.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[Zeinfeld]

Any company I've done business with in the past three years? Does that mean that old gas station I stopped at in the middle of Kansas once is going to send me e-flyers? What is the world coming to?

That is not the main wrecking clause. The wrecking clause is the requirement for individual opt-out from every mailing list. So the spam sender can create a new 'division' once a day and send you new spam no matter how often you opt out.

A global opt-out list is not such a problem, provided it is one-way encrypted (an old MIT suggestion) so the opt-out list can be used to see if a particular email is opted out but not as a source of addresses to spam. Yes we know the spam senders will ignore it, however making people sign up to get a right to sue a spam sender is not a major obstacle.

The real problem is the Republican's attempt to take out the private right of action. AOL and Earthlink have been very effective in suing the spammy bastards into the ground. They have judgements for millions against a lot of spammers. OK they will not collect it all but they will make the spam senders miserable.

In one case they got the spammer's lawyer who set up fake companies for him - now liable jointly and severally for a $6.9 million contempt judgment